I left my whole <10 readers without so much as a goodbye. And it’s been months. Some probably shook their head and wrote it off as the inevitable internet blog writer disappearance. Some might have even noticed I was gone! Some might have even missed me. Aww, shucks.

Regardless of how you felt/reacted, I do apologize for the sudden up and ago. I can imagine the questions this caused.

“Did she get eaten by wild Australian EVIL CRAZY PREDATORY ANIMALS?!”

“Did she die heroically saving no less than a hundred orphans from a burning building during an earthquake and/or evil genius plot?”

“Where is she? How can she do this? -remove from RSS feed-”

“Can it be…z-z-zombies?”

“Musicofshadows who?”

All are valid questions. Simple answer is, I got busy and blogging became a chore. Rather than submitting to the vicious cycle I simply dropped it all. I didn’t log in, I stopped checking other blogs (a mistake, I’ve missed so much awesome content), and forgot. Of course I didn’t fully forget, and was even tempted to log on and post occasionally or at least post saying “hey, taking some time off”. But I didn’t. Oops.

I’m not sure if I’m back, I am feeling drawn in again though. We’ll see. Keep your eyes peeled, but not too closely. No fanfare dramatic re-entry just yet, I’m afraid. But maybe.

It hasn’t been a particularly interesting week this week. Granted, I managed to hurt my neck opening a bar of soap and jam only the very tip of my finger in the front door whilst attempting to open it carrying 10 bags of shopping in, but these are less interesting and more… downright silly. Don’t ask how either happened, especially the first.

Other things of note:

I told Miss Amazing that she should think she’s attractive (she is), but “maybe like, not fully believe it just to stop you from ever like, becoming 10000kg blob like.” Why yes, I have a way with women.

I declared myself a chocolate ninja. This actually sounds suspiciously dirty, which wasn’t my intention (for once). What I meant is, when chocolate is around I can manage to eat a lot of it before anyone notices. Also, if someone attempts to steal chocolate off me, I use my superior skills to get it back.

The ninja intercept (click to enlarge)

I also scored a heap of free stuff at a Careers Fair. Everyone loves free stuff even if it’s useless and/or branded heavily with corporate logos. Here’s a sample of some things I got.

A beer cooler

A small thermos-like-yet-more-plasticy coffee holder

A level tool that doubles as a screwdriver AND a flashlight and looks like an oversized pen, but isn’t one.

Pens. Some with cool things attached, some interesting, most not.

Candy. Most of which I ate while I was there.

Stress balls in the form of a gold bar, and one in the shape of a cube.

There was more, but it’s not particularly interesting. I love how the stands with the most free stuff are more popular. Oh, and the highlight of the lot? I got a t-shirt. They weren’t just handing them out though. There was a small sign at the stand. “Dance for a shirt.” (ooo, dirty. No.)So, I did. Those poor people got graced with my interpretation of the chicken dance. But hey, we all do crazy things for free stuff right? What’s the craziest thing you’ve done for free stuff?

I’ve been meaning to do a post about spam, (I was about to make a ‘not the canned variety’ joke but it kinda is so I won’t) as a lot of it amuses me greatly. Granted, that’s not particularly hard to do but as anyone who has a blog allowing comments knows, spam happens.

There are approximately 4 types that I’d like to touch on. There’s more, but these make up the bulk of the automated comments that slip through the cracks (not a lot do, which is impressive). I realize this is largely stating the obvious but some people are unaware, and the rest of you can just nod silently, or loudly, or whatever it is you want to do. Not entirely sure how to nod loudly, but it’s entirely up to you! I’d list these in some sort of order, but it’s a lot more fun to list randomly.

TYPE A: The Sneaky

These are so crafty, they almost pass as legitimate comments. Almost, but I’m sometimes deeply suspicious of comments praising my work. (Yes, you should praise it but I do occasionally deflate my ego and boggle. It might be rare, but it happens.) Sometimes, they even relate slightly to the post content. Aha! Look at the suspicious site they’ve listed as their website and/or email! I’m onto you, crafty buggers. I’ll admit, if I’m feeling particularly needy, I’ll remove the email address and site and let it through. It’s nice to pretend to have more readers, you know?

Example: “Your post is very informative and helpful. This is a real issue. I have written much on this topic, you do good job”

TYPE B: The Crazy

These ones well… they’re hard to define other than wtf comments. Usually glaringly out of place in regards to the post they’re commenting on. There’s one in my spam queue right now.

Example: “japan is in a crisis right now”

Example: “oh yea hazelnut”

Example: “What is your day?”

The first one isn’t crazy in and of itself, but it’s location on a post I made about lizards weeks ago is. A thing to note though, this comments may genuinely be your readers messing with you. This type I’m tempted to let through as well, just for how out of place they are.

TYPE C: The Babbler

Random words put together in hope it’ll look like sentences. It’s actually quite fun to make some of these up myself. You should give it a try.

Good example: “And woman she went door cat, random stalled at and a touch banana wenaever.”

Bad example: “The lady went outside cat bird fish cucumber.”

Real example: “Later of they was even the empty designer, and even of he wrapped her second handbag to approach its to call luxury replica. It buzzed many of replica tamed tightly wiped sure wrist as watches into lou when sl*t stuffed you, all each many”

In the good example, we see no sentence structure whatsoever, random words and misspellings. These are the signs of a good type C spam comment. The second example ends well, but makes sense initially so it’s not acceptable. The third is a real comment that continued on for 4 large paragraphs after that snippet. Sheesh.

TYPE D: The Phisherman

These are your most obvious spam. Most spam filters do a good job of catching these nowadays but an occasional one surfaces every now and then. Often just a phishing link, they may add poorly spelled words as well. Or reference Viagra. Cheap. Hmm..

Example: “try it now <phishinglink>”

That about wraps it up, if you’ve got any novel spam comments to share please do so, there’s some truly hilarious ones out there and I’d love to hear them. Ever get tempted to let a few choice comments through? I forgot to save a lot of mine and by the time I got around to writing this up they’d all disappeared. Lucky I made fancy animations right?

In somewhat of a preamble, or introductory post to a series of posts I (hope) to do about Australian accents, I thought I’d start with some general tidbits.

First, a quick geography and history lesson for those…how do I put this…less inclined to look outside their corner of the globe. And for everyone else too. Australia is that oddly shaped lump plus island down south somewhere. USA (minus Alaska) is, well, you all know where it is. I include Britain largely because they’re included in our history. Basically, Australia did have indigenous people (Aboriginals) here already, but Britain decided to claim it for themselves. So, with a new bunch of land only a ship’s journey away, what better do with it than turn it into a penal colony. If you’ve heard us called convicts it’s not due to our crime rate but due to the fact majority of our original (non-indigenous) population were indeed criminals. Though those days stealing a loaf of bread was enough crime to be shipped halfway across the world.

Fascinating (Click to enlarge)

I won’t bore you with the rest of the history but people explored, the population grew, immigration started, etc etc and here we are. If only all history classes went like that. Onto some more geography, if you take a look you’ll notice that USA (minus Alaska and I guess Hawaii) actually looks a similar size to Australia. That’s because it they’re almost exactly the same size. That’s right, you guys have ~48 states in the same space we have 8. (technically 2 are ‘territories’ but they are basically the same thing) Your population is probably about 14 times as large as ours. (check out all these figures, I feel so official)

Now, I’m not trying to compare us too much, Australia and America are very different despite both being English speaking countries. Both have their ups and downs, and even though Australians probably know more about Americans than Americans know about Australians, I still wouldn’t claim to be any sort of expert.

What does all this have to do with Australian accents? Well, honestly, not much. The main thing is I wanted to highlight the Australia and British connection (we’re also a part of the Commonwealth see:the Queen) so those of you Americans (*cough* Cotton *cough*) who have tried to speak in an Australian accent and sound woefully British don’t feel too bad. It’s hard to understand, but to us, English people sound very different, but a lot of you seem to not notice that difference. It may be a sort of dialect thing, or something else, I have no idea. Any suggestions why feel free to let me know in the comments.

Don’t stick figures look fabulous with flags for faces?

I’ll leave you with a few tidbits of Australian slang (those online dictionaries of slang are a bit hit and miss you see). You may have heard some of these before, but it’s a start right?

‘Arvo’: Afternoon. (“I’m going for a drive this arvo.”) Generally not used entirely in place of the word afternoon, more when you would say “this afteroon”

‘Maccas’: McDonalds. (“I had Maccas for breakfast this morning.”)

‘Servo’: Service Station (Gas station) (“I need fuel, we’d better go to the servo on the way home.”)

There I was, just relaxing in bed, writing on my laptop. Alone in my room, door closed. Nothing unusual about it. This is the stage you become almost completely unaware of your surroundings…

All of a sudden, I notice a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye.

The first time I dismissed it completely. Eyes play tricks on you, electricity surges, there’s logical explanations. Of course, I promptly forgot about it. Later, I’m watching a movie in bed and completely absorbed in the plot (I can’t remember the movie but it must have been ok). Almost on cue with a music surge in the score, I see it again. That dark blur of movement that is gone before you can look closer. The second time it’s a little harder to dismiss. I began to wonder exactly what it was…

Something nefarious no doubt…

Wondering didn’t last too long, but I did have to rewind my movie a bit. In cases like these my imagination is a bad thing. But I resumed watching my movie, and I completely forgot about it once more. Until… THERE IT WAS AGAIN. This time, I knew there was definitely something odd going on. But this time, the mysterious thing had been moving slightly slower as it darted across the corner of my vision. I managed to catch a quick glance. Much to my relief, it wasn’t an enormous spider, like I had initially feared, or anything supernatural (or at least I hoped.)

So what exactly was it?

Not quite. (Gosh I draw such amazing dinosaurs)

All I know is it’s a lizard. I tried in vain to capture it on film to show you the sneaky little bugger, and to get a better idea of what he looked like. But he’s always too quick, and disappears faster than free parking spots near work/school/anywhereyouhavetobe . A mystery indeed! This is honestly the best picture I could get. And even then it looks like one of those fake bigfoot pictures, or the ones paparazzi take of celebrities from 50 miles away. Just as I was about to publish this I captured a slightly clearer picture (you think this one looks bad, take a look at this)

Blurred and with bad lighting, but he’s there alright

As soon as I get close, he disappears out the door or behind my desk. And if I open the door or peer behind the desk? He’s vanished into thin air and won’t be spotted until his next dash across the room. No joke, there is nowhere he can go but somehow he VANISHES. Want to see him? Too bad, he appears on his terms and his terms only. Elusive. Invisible. Speedy. I’ll take name suggestions. So far I’ve come up with ‘Gonzales’ and ‘Mysterylizard’, though I also call him by other more explicit names.

This lizard continues to taunt me, he even ran across while I was writing this post. I haven’t seen him in a week and he shows up while I’m writing about him, just to make his point. Lucky he’s harmless… I hope.

Once again I’ve failed to deliver, and it’s worrying me that this is beginning to form a pattern. When life gets busy, the blog suffers. When life is quieter, the blog gets busy. That’s basically my excuse for a measly one post a week ratio.

So I’m late on Scrutiny Sunday as well, but it’s still Sunday in America or at least parts of it for a few more hours so I’m taking advantage of that fact, and the fact I missed posting yesterday to still call this my weekly Scrutiny post. I had difficulty thinking of a topic this week, especially since this post needs to be rushed out for it to count as Sunday still. (I’m going with California time) And then I thought to myself, as I checked my Google Reader blog list, that perhaps I should mention the fantastic idea that friends at another blog are running with.

Now, I say friends loosely, I mean it more in the internet stalker way which sounds bad but really isn’t in this case. One of them I’ve spoken to (and I say this loosely as well, as commenting on blogs isn’t exactly -speaking- as such) a grand total of once and another we’ve spoken more often and united against artsy logo’d men etc. (Speaking of, I missed being there for you in reference to THAT post, you know who you are and I’m sorry. But more excuses to come in another medium, I’m sure).

Enough rambling. These two (and another, I think? Sorry!) run the blog over at WitBehind and while their blog is fantastic, it’s an idea they use that really struck me as An Awesome Idea. It’s called a No Rules Linky Party. Which is an awesome name in and of itself, firstly because it has ‘No Rules’ which means one can indulge their rebellious side, and secondly because it’s a party. Almost makes me want to wear a party hat. Anyhow, their description of it goes something like:

‘Let me introduce you to the No Rules Linky Party. It is just that, no rules, restrictions, and no money-back guarantee.’

Having participated in one whole linky party, yes ONE, I am practically a pro at these things now, I thought I’d share the love back. Because ladies, you are saintly yes, but I can be too. That or I needed blog fodder, but we’ll go with how saintly I am. Makes us both sound better. Honestly though, I really like this idea and intend to participate as often as I can, not only to hype my own blog but because it’s really cool to read about a topic, then go see others thoughts on that same topic. Which I suspect is the exact reason for it.

Look at all those streamers, it must be a great party! And they have hats!*

*hats not included

So thank you, ladies at WitBehind, for introducing me to the concept of Linky Parties. Now I’ve finally figured it out, or at least as much as I’m probably going to, I’ll be keeping an eye out (well, an even closer one that I normally do) for the parties. Oh, and another great thing is you’re all invited. No need to feel left out, even the silliest outcast of blogs gets invited to this party. There may not be a money back guarantee, and there isn’t always a cake, but it’s a whole lot of fun and the more people, the merrier funnily enough. So, dance on over (or at least do a little bopping in your chair) to WitBehind and join in the merriment.

Scrutiny Sundays are a creation of Reputation@Stake over at The Stupid Bet, share your link if you’re participating so I/he/we can all linkyparty hard tog- or just so I can share it as well.

PS: Pardon the title, if you read it aloud celebration is good alliteration, but written not so much. Plus, I’m selling the idea of celebration. Yep, I’m a clever one.